Left Breathless
by Foibles and Fables
Summary: Of love and loss, laughter and anger, everyday and extraordinary, remembering and forgetting, past, present, and future. Completed claim for the 1sentence community on LiveJournal. Burke/Cristina


******Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is the property of Shonda Rhimes and ABC. This writing is for entertainment purposes only and is not for profit.  
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**#01 – Ring**

The engagement ring really was quite gorgeous, and there were some days where Cristina actually considered wearing it.

**#02 – Hero**

When she first met him, he was one of her heroes – when he left her, she wanted to believe that he was a villain, but she simply couldn't.

**#03 – Memory**

Years later, he catches a glimpse of her from across the convention hall and panics; for a split second, he wonders if there was any possible chance that she could have suffered from amnesia and wouldn't remember him; then, he wonders if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

**#04 – Box**

He tells her to cauterize, and it's like she's a child opening a huge wrapped box on Christmas morning; her enthusiasm is scary and twisted but so _her_ which made it wonderful.

**#05 – Run**

"You really like to run, don't you?" she asked, breathlessly spent, as she collapsed in the grass, as he stared down at her with a look on his face that said they hadn't even begun.

**#06 – Hurricane**

Preston Burke had never laughed harder than he did when he heard Cristina belting "Rock You Like a Hurricane" in the shower, blissfully unaware of his presence.

**#07 – Wings**

"Gives you wings, but isn't so good for you," he observes smugly, nodding toward the beverage in her hand; she rolls her eyes (-"since when has that worried me…red meat, remember?").

**#08 – Cold**

She was trapped in The Pit with a kid with a bad case of the common cold; she begged him for a way out, ended up scrubbing in on an aortic dissection, and he never let her forget that she was forever in his debt.

**#09 – Red**

She spread more scarlet paint over the pristine white wall; red made her think of blood, which made her think of the heart, which made her think of Burke, which defeated the purpose of re-painting the wall in the first place.

**#10 – Drink**

"Tequila?" he asked, trying not to frown disdainfully, fingering the stem of his martini glass; she quirked her eyebrows in a silent _duh_.

**#11 – Midnight**

Midnight was his favorite time of night; she was asleep and he was awake, allowing him to watch her intently without receiving an annoyed glance.

**#12 – Temptation**

She looks so _good_ today that if there wasn't a whole surgical team watching them and a patient on the operating table between them, he would have taken her right then and there – somehow, he knows that she wouldn't mind.

**#13 – View**

"Hope you're enjoying the view," Cristina commented with a satisfied smirk when she felt his eyes burning holes into her the first time she walked around Burke's apartment naked.

**#14 – Music**

As Burke looked through Cristina's iPod (she had forgotten it at home one day), he was elated when he saw that she had downloaded the entire Eugene Foote collection without him even knowing.

**#15 – Silk**

It never ceased to amaze Burke that, as abrasive and rough her personality was, her skin was as smooth as silk.

**#16 – Cover**

Burke woke suddenly with a chill, covered in goose bumps; Cristina had stolen the cover from him, sleeping peacefully, wrapped snugly in the flannel – he decided to let her be the comfortable one that night.

**#17 – Promise**

Addison and the rest of that particular surgical team heard his promise - she, the one person who mattered, did not.

**#18 – Dream**

He let her scrub in, cooked her an amazing dinner, and rubbed her feet; afterwards, she looked at him and said languidly, "you're _still_ not the man of my dreams, you know."

**#19 – Candle**

"He really _is_ a woman," Cristina said incredulously when she noticed the jasmine-scented candle burning on the coffee table in his apartment.

**#20 – Talent**

When speaking with the Chief, Burke only told of her surgical talent; her other talents were not exactly appropriate for Richard Webber's ears.

**#21 – Silence**

To him, her silence – a steeled jaw, a sharp glare, a languid glance in a different direction, a sigh, a frozen shoulder – was somehow completely deafening.

**#22 – Journey**

After the horrendous failure at charades, the four played musical trivia; he outdid himself in the clueless department when he couldn't guess the artist to her rendition of "Don't Stop Believing" (it wasn't an _exactly_ accurate rendition, to give him some kind of credit).

**#23 – Fire**

Whenever she wanted to annoy him, she would bring up the time when a woman's heart had caught fire while he was operating; Cristina could not remember one instance in which it didn't work.

**#24 – Strength**

His tie was loose and the first button of his dress shirt was undone as he braced himself by his palms over the bathroom sink, avoiding his reflection in the mirror above, repeating his mental mantra of _she's strong, she'll be alright, she's strong, she'll be alright_; he hoped her strength would be enough.

**#25 – Mask**

He watched her perform her first running whip-stitch, and, although he was wearing his surgical mask, it was obvious to everyone in the O.R. that he was smiling.

**#26 – Ice**

Owen Hunt might have been the one to literally pull the ice from her body, but Preston Burke had been the first to melt it away; that fact always nagged at the back of her mind.

**#27 – Fall**

Burke couldn't help but smirk as he read that Seattle Grace had fallen to number twelve in the ranks of teaching hospitals – his reaction was not out of spite for the hospital, but humor for what he was sure Cristina's outrage was like.

**#28 – Forgotten**

Years later, she catches a glimpse of him from across the convention hall and panics; for a split second, she wonders he can tell without looking that she hasn't forgotten about him yet; then, she wonders if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

**#29 – Dance**

When they danced together in the kitchen, they were teenagers again; not thinking of carotid stenosis or coronary artery disease, but letting their bodies move carefree to the beat of the techno.

**#30 – Body**

In medical school, they had learned everything there was to know about the body – its systems, its weaknesses, its intricate inner workings; yet when they explored each other, every time, they both discovered subtleties that they hadn't known before.

**#31 – Sacred**

Marriage is a sacred union; too late, Cristina realized that, all along, she didn't _think_ she wanted it – she _knew_.

**#32 – Farewells**

Farewells are never easy, especially when you're ready and wearing the dress.

**#33 – World**

He glanced resignedly at his trembling hand, willing it to stop, for her; he would go along with her plan and lie, conceal; because he's realized, for her, he would set the world on fire.

**#34 – Formal**

When preparing for their first official date, Cristina worried that her dress was too formal, and Burke worried that his suit was not formal enough.

**#35 – Fever**

"Dogged," he had remarked that morning when she charged out the door, ready for work despite the pale face and the dark circles under her eyes; when he saw her next, hours later, it was in an on-call room where she was motionless, face-down, and asleep on the bed – he shook his head fondly and sat beside her, placing a hand on her back.

**#36 – Laugh**

Her laugh was charming, feminine, and downright _cute_, all of the things Burke imagined she really was on the inside; to make it come out was the only reason he danced like a fool in front of her.

**#37 – Lies**

It was the lies that chipped away at them and eventually broke them – lying to their friends, lying to their colleagues, lying to each other, lying to themselves; but, even afterward, the undeniable of truth remained in wispy quantities serving as a painful and eternal reminder.

**#38 – Forever**

Cristina's breath hitched as she glanced around the store they had taken her to – white dresses meant a wedding, a wedding meant forever, and forever meant _forever_; she considered it a horrifying sign when she got stuck in one and it took the efforts of Meredith, Izzie, _and_ Callie to wrench her free from its grip.

**#39 – Overwhelmed**

When she was overwhelmed, she would seek out the vent; when she was particularly distressed, she would take a deep breath and imagine that Burke was there – then, she would feel overwhelmed _and_ guilty.

**#40 – Whisper**

Their fingers were entwined, mirroring their bodies, and deep inside felt so agonizingly good, all fluid motion and rough gasps; his lips found her ear and he whispered incoherent promises, and her grip on his hands increased considerably.

**#41 – Wait**

"Thanks for waiting," he murmured, standing in the doorway with a bag fresh groceries for dinner in his hand, when he saw that she was already three-quarters of the way through a take-out container of chicken lo mein.

**#42 – Talk**

"You certainly _are_ one to talk about perfectionism, Mister Dewey Decimal System."

**#43 – Search**

Burke tore through his apartment, searching frantically for his lucky scrub cap; a strange mixture of relief, shock, and arousal came upon him when he discovered Cristina in the bedroom – wearing the cap and nothing else – waiting for him.

**#44 – Hope**

When she peeked into the other trauma bay and realized that _he_, not some random stranger, was the other GSW, it felt like all the hope in the world had crumpled to the speckled-tile floor.

**#45 – Eclipse**

The concrete was hard beneath him, his shoulder seared, there were sirens and he was vaguely aware that he was losing blood - thoughts fleeted through his mind, regrets, dreams, hopes, his parents, his friends, his family; just before he blacked out, her face eclipsed all of them.

**#46 – Gravity**

She had a specific gravity about her, with perfectionism, skill, determination, sarcasm, and this certain endearing quality he couldn't put a name to orbiting her; he was a helpless victim of her pull (and he didn't particularly mind).

**#47 – Highway**

After he commented about how fast she drove, masked terror in his eyes and white-knuckled grip on the safety handle, she replied flatly, "you should see me on my motorcycle."

**#48 – Unknown**

It was something neither had experienced before, a grayness that extended forever where it seemed like one mistake, one false move and it would all-

**#49 – Lock**

That first time, when Cristina locked the on-call room door, Burke knew his life was about to change.

**#50 – Breathe**

The wind rushed around her, propelled from below, as she professed her love, feeling as though tiny pieces of herself were breaking off and melting through the perforated metal floor – she claimed not to be able to breathe, but little did the man in front of her know that she had already been left breathless before.


End file.
